Avicennia nitida Jacq.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Verbenaceae

• Scientific Name

  Avicennia nitida Jacq.

• Description

  Species Description - Like the 3 other kinds of trees inhabitating shallow salt water and forming Mangrove Swamps or Manglares, the Black Mangrove is very widely distributed, growing throughout tropical and subtropical America, north to Bermuda and the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas, where it is also called Black Tree or Blackwood, and in the Old World tropics. It has the peculiar habit of sending up, from its roots buried in the mud or sand, upright, slender structures, which are sometimes numerous, close together, and are supposed to be specialized, aerating organs; these are to be seen to advantage at low tide, rising 10 to 40 centimeters above the mud. Why this tree requires root-aeration while the other Mangroves do not has never been satisfactorily explained. Avicenna, in whose honor this genus was named by Linnaeus, was a distinguished oriental physician of Bokhara, who lived from 980 to 1036. Besides the tree here illustrated,, two or three other species are known, all tropical in distribution. The genus has been classified by most authors in the Vervain Family, based on the structure of its flowers, but its 1-celled ovary, pendulous seeds, and unusual roots may well be regarded as sufficient differences to have it considered as constituting a distinct family, Avicenniaceae. Avicennia nitida is a tree, about 16 meters high in its maximum development, but usually lower and sometimes shrubby. The bark is shallowly fissured, dark in color, and scaly; the dark brown wood is a little lighter in weight than water, durable, and used for posts and sills; the twigs are finely hairy when young. Its leaves are opposite, oblong, untoothed, leathery in texture, short -stalked, from 3 to 8 centimeters long, blunt or minutely tipped, the upper surface smooth and faintly shining (whence the specific name nitida) , the under side pale and finely hairy. The white flowers are borne in small clusters; they have a small, cup-shaped, silky, 5-lobed calyx, a bell-shaped corolla 10 to 14 millimeters broad, its short tube nearly cylindric, its 4 spreading lobes rounded; there are 4, short stamens, a 1-celled ovary containing 4 ovules, and the short style is 2-lobed. The fruit is obliquely oblong or elliptic, capsular, apiculate, light green, from 2, to 5 centimeters long, and the seeds usually germinate within it.

• Discussion

  Black Mangrove Mangle bobo Vervain Family Avicennia nitida Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum 25. 1760.